Anyone using OpenOffice?

Given the direction MS is going with XP, I'm thinking Win2K is the last MS OS I'll be using. Especially if OpenOffice/StarOffice works as well as they're saying.

Anyway, I'm curious to know if anyone here is using it. I'm mainly concerned about usability and file compatibility. Would a MS Office user be able to pick up OpenOffice pretty quickly? Would he be able to coexist seamlessly with MS Office users?

download it and try it. as long as you're on a reasonably fast connection, it shouldn't take long to download at all. (although on a dialup connection it could take a while).

i've been using staroffice for almost a year, and OpenOffice is a pretty good improvement on staroffice 5.2 (each program is a separate application now and the integrated desktop is gone).

the file compatibility seems just about perfect. if you want to give a file to someone using word, just save the document in word format (you can probably set that as the default).

as to usability, i think if you just poke around the menus a little bit and set the options how you want them, it'll be as much like word as you want it to be. (for instance: the autocorrect/auto-help pop-up things irritated me at first, but i had to turn those things off in Word also).

a year and a half later... i just started using the newest version 1.1.0 (came out a few days ago), and it is another GREAT improvement over previous versions. complex word documents with important formatting (like a resume) come out pretty darn close to perfect. also the easy way to save files as .pdf files makes sure that your document will look right when you send it to someone. one thing i had missed in earlier versions was the macro editor... and now it has one, seems to work very well.OpenOffice.org